MFAH presents
Author Talk: "American Everyman: Winslow Homer"
Meet biographer William R. Cross
.
Saturday, December 12, 2026 | 2 PM - 3 PM
MFAH Main Campus - Lynn Wyatt Theater in the Kinder Building
5500 Main St. | Houston, TX 77004
TICKET INFO: The Author Talk is included with Museum Admission!
Click HERE for more Info
PARKING INFO: Kinder Garage (Drop Off at Kinder Building)
In Winslow Homer: American Passage, biographer William R. Cross unveils his subject’s role as the visual counterpart to Mark Twain with connections to contemporaries such as painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler and poets Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Cross also illuminates Homer’s social context and sensitivity to the fundamental role of design in art.
Homer was witness to the rhythms of sea, storm, tide, and season. The period in which he lived included the U.S. Civil War, colonial tyranny, invention and industrialization, and the challenge of achieving a just and equitable society in the Gilded Age. Homer’s astonishing breadth of subject, media, and perspective reflects his restless mind, empathic heart, and innovative hand. His legacy comprises few answers but poses a broad range of enduring, entrancing questions.
A book signing follows the lecture, which is presented in conjunction with Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
About the Speaker
William R. Cross attended Yale College and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is chair of the advisory board for the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and his first biography, Winslow Homer: American Passage, was published in 2022. Cross curated the exhibition Homer at the Beach: A Marine Painter’s Journey 1869–1880 at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He is currently working on a biography of Louis Comfort Tiffany.